English Department Program Review

May 2005

DESCRIPTION AND PROGRAM GOALS

            The English department is comprised of several programs, the overarching goal of which is to give students writing instruction and critical reading experiences that will enable them to find, develop, and clearly articulate their ideas so that they can succeed in their academic studies, their occupational aims, and their life aspirations.  In general, the department has three program levels:  transfer, developmental, and basic skills.  Composition classes dominate our course offerings; in fact, English 1 is the highest demand class on campus, with English 21A and English 2 ranked third and fifth, respectively.  English also offers grammar, reading, creative writing, and literature classes.  Since our last program review the department’s weekly teaching hours (WTH’s) have increased significantly, from about 750 WTH to over 1000 per semester, or about 33%.  

            The department is continually adjusting to accommodate the needs of our student population and the mission of the college.  Among the most striking changes in the last six years is the increase in weekly teaching hours for our basic skills and B level classes, as well for transfer courses delivered through distance education.  English has also offered select sections of core courses to target populations in college programs such as Women’s College, Latino/Adelante, Black Collegians, Scholars, and EOPS and Scholars Summer Bridge.  English faculty have actively participated in campus wide activities and projects concerning student success, including the Student Success Project, the President’s Task Force on Retention, and SCORE.  English has partnered with the Nursing program through a VTEA grant to identify and remediate at-risk nursing students.  Beginning in the coming summer, English will also offer courses in the FYI Bridge Program as the college continues to refine and develop implementation of learning communities through Title V.  Furthermore, it is steadily growing its dual enrollment course offerings through partnerships with area high schools, including Taft and Cal Arts Magnet School (CAMS) and, soon, Carson and Pacific Palisades. 

            In our course sequences, we offer three program levels:  basic skills, developmental, and transfer. A flow chart of our core composition and reading courses is included in the appendix.  In a cross-section of these levels are our writing, reading, and literature programs.  Courses regularly offered among the department levels include: 

            English Basic Skills:  C level (entire curriculum has been revised)

                  Writing Courses

                        English 81A:     The Paragraph--Plus     

                        English 81B:     The Basic Essay—Plus*

                        English 84W:    The Basic College Essay (formerly 81C)

                  Reading Courses

                        English 83A:            Reading and Vocabulary I

                        English 83B:            Reading and Vocabulary II*

                        English 84R:            Reading and Vocabulary III (formerly 83C)

            Developmental English:  B level

                  Writing Courses

                        English 21A:     English Fundamentals 1

                        English 21B:   English Fundamentals 2

                        English 22:       Writing Laboratory

                  Reading Course

                        English 23:            Intermediate Reading and Vocabulary

                  Grammar

                        English 24:            Grammar Review

            Transfer Level English:  A level

                  Writing Courses

                        English 1:            Reading and Composition 1

                        English 2:            Reading and Composition 2

                        English 31:              Advanced Composition

                        English 30A/B:   Creative Writing

                  Reading Course

                        English 48:       Speed Reading and College Vocabulary

                  Literature Courses

                        English 3 and 4:  World Literature 1 and 2

                        English 5 and 6:  English Literature 1 and 2

                        English 7 and 8:  American Literature 1 and 2

                        English 10:  Ethnic Literature of the U.S. (American Cultures)

                        English 14:  Contemporary American Literature 

                        English 15:  Shakespeare

                        English 17:  Contemporary [Post-Colonial] British Literature*

                        English 32:  History and Literature of Contemporary Africa*

                        English 34:  African-American Literature

                        English 39:  Images of Women in Literature

                        English 40:  Asian Literature

                        English 41:  Asian-American Literature*

                        English 45:  Asian Film, Literature, and Society*

                        English 50:  Mythology

                        English 51 and 52:  Literature of the Bible, Old and New Testaments

                        English 53:  Latino-American Literature (formerly, Mexican-American)

                        English 54:  Native American Literature

                        English 55:  Modern Drama

                        English 56:  20^th Century European Literature

                        English 57:  Latin-American Literature

                        English 59:  Lesbian and Gay Literature

[Note:  * Indicates courses that are new since the last program review.]

            The sequence of courses and prerequisites are appropriate.  Course outlines were updated this spring and have been submitted to Curriculum Committee.  Although the department was not, for this program review, required to define student learning outcomes for all of its courses, we have written them for 25 percent of our classes.  We collaborated this spring to develop them for our highest demand core courses—English 21A, English 1, and English 2.  Reading instructors have also collaborated to define student learning outcomes for each reading course; these will be presented to the department for consideration and response.  And we have completed them for English 31, 51, and 52.  We intend our focus on all of these courses to be the beginning of a process we can complete in dialogue with one another over the coming year as we consider our other courses and programs and their place in the college mission.                  

            Since fall 1998, the English department has experienced marked growth at the C and B levels. 

English Department:  Number of Course Sections Offered in Core Courses

While our transfer level enrollment seems to have bounced back from the program reduction of 2003-2004, enrollment in pre-transfer level classes has mushroomed.  With growing numbers of first-time students who enter Santa Monica College taking the placement test, we can expect this trend to continue. 

C-Level Program:  Basic Skills

The entire curriculum for C-level courses was revised four years ago (the rationale came from our reading teachers and is explained below.  See C-Level Reading and Lab below).  Last year English 81C and 83C were re-titled English 84W and 84R, respectively.  The expanded offering now includes three sequenced courses each for writing—English 81A, 81B, and 84W—and three for reading—English 83A,

83B, and 84R.

In theory, the courses in these two sub-disciplines are to be synchronized within a given semester for each student, so that, e.g., 81A would be taken concurrently with 83A.  However, in application, because of the natural order of emergent skills, students make progress more readily in the reading sequence than in the writing.   Therefore, many students may be in a higher designated reading class than writing class.

Students who receive a “C” on the English placement test enter into English 81A/83A along with students who enter SMC without taking the English placement test. Once students begin taking courses, they may be moved by teacher recommendation; the placement test itself may not be re-taken. Students must earn their promotions based on classroom performance and course mastery exams.  All classes at this level are graded credit/no credit.

Basic Skills Writing and Lab

Department-wide exit exams occur during the last two weeks of the semester for each of the three basic skills writing courses.   These exams are normed by fellow basic skills instructors to determine students’ readiness for advancement.  In general, 81A students must achieve a 70 percent (minimum) on grammar work and essays, in addition to completing an 80 percent (minimum) of all class assignments, in order to advance to 84W.  Students in 81A who completed the work but whose level of achievement is still markedly deficient are moved to 81B for further remediation of their English basic skills.  In some (few) cases, an 81A student may be deemed ready for English 21A, but students may not enroll until they have completed the sequence of C-level reading courses (or successfully challenged the reading prerequisite by taking a proficiency exam and thus received a prerequisite waiver).

Currently, students entering 81A are reading, on average, at about a fifth- or sixth-grade level.   Their academic writing skills are concomitantly weak.  One of the goals of C-level instruction is to help students make up, say, four years of deficiency in two years, so they will be ready for B-level courses.

            We have had no full-time instructor in basic skills writing (Frances Kurilich is 50 percent retired and teaches her load in spring) for the past four years.  Yet, in the last five years, the basic skills writing sections have nearly doubled in number.  According to the Assessment Center, about 30 percent of entering students this fall placed at C level. The increase stems no doubt in part from an increase in first-time college students now taking the assessment test in their first semester, up 290 percent, according to statistics collected by Esau Tovar.  According to college data, 900 of the 3,128 first-time students who took the English assessment in fall 2004 placed in basic skills English.  We are fortunate that the Ad Hoc Ranking Committee of the Academic Senate agreed that hiring a basic skills writing instructor was a priority for the college, and we are in that hiring process now.

            We are looking for a basic skills instructor with leadership skills to come into that position.  Without a full-time faculty member in this area, we have not had faculty oversight and coordination of the basic skills writing lab, and that responsibility has fallen on the department chair. Coordination between classroom instruction and lab support has been challenging when so many hourly faculty are brought into the program all at once, as happened last fall.  (Among the adjuncts teaching C-level writing classes, eleven were new to the program.)   It became necessary to hire four additional instructional assistants to absorb the added responsibility in the lab and we were forced to re-conceive its operational structure, which created some positive changes, as it turned out.

English 81A requires two hours of lab a week (the lab now meets in Drescher 308), and each class has a scheduled fifty-minute lab time so that students either attend lab directly after class or directly before class.  This spring, we have made a series of changes in the English 81A lab.   The goals of these changes were to increase the amount of interaction between the lab staff and the students, and to simplify the lab organization for instructors, staff, and students.

The first change was to organize the lab lessons into standardized modules, contained in a lab book shared by all sections of English 81A. Each module covers grammar and writing subjects covered by the instructors in class.  Each lesson includes worksheets, directions, and explanations.  This standardization allowed the lab staff to become more familiar with the lessons, and more able to present the lessons clearly.

The second change was to structure the lab to encourage more group work.  The study carrels were removed and replaced with tables around which four to six students could sit.  This allowed the students to work together, and for the staff to sit with small groups and work on lessons, explain directions, go over answers and explain why any particular answer was not correct.

So far, the response to these changes has been very positive.  Students feel they get more from the lab, the staff feels more productive, and the teachers find the new lab helpful.  The system has created a deeper sense of community that carries into the classroom and strengthens the relationship between classroom and lab.

The lab staff and some instructors have contributed to the Lab Book and the restructuring of the lab.  In the future, we will continue to encourage participation in the evolution of the new lab.  We also want to increase the coordination between the lessons presented in the lab and the lessons taught by the teachers in class.  The lab modules should be reinforcement for the classroom instruction, so teachers need to let the staff know what module would be most appropriate in any given week.  We are continuing to add to and modify the lessons in the Lab Book to better meet these goals.

The success of the changes we have made in the lab gives us pause.  As we felt the surge of basic skills’ enrollment last fall, we realized that our current system of requiring entire English 81A classes to move from classroom to lab restricts our course offerings.  We cannot offer multiple sections of an English 81A in high demand time slots because we do not have available lab space.  Our thought was that we might accommodate more students if we required students to register for their lab hours at scheduled hourly lab times.  In other words, each lab would have a section number and MIS would program the enrollment system to require students in 81A to register for two one-hour lab times.  While this change would perhaps allow us to accommodate more students, we would lose the sense of learning community between lab and classroom.  We will need to weigh this and to reconsider our structuring of the basic skills writing lab so that we can balance our goal to provide access with our intention to provide the best possible support to student success.

Meanwhile, we also need to consider the needs our English 81B and 84W classes.  Both require drop-in hours—81B two hours per week and 84W one.  Available drop-in times are now fewer, given the growth in number of 81A sections, which schedule the lab. 

C-Level Reading and Lab:

            Originally two reading classes, English 83 (grades 3-7) and English 84 (grade 8)), were offered at the C level.  Faculty found that approximately one-fourth of the students in English 83 require two more semesters of work before moving to English 21A and English 23.  When students enter the C-level program at lower elementary reading levels, they will need more than a year before they reach the B-level (21A/B and 23 classes).  English 83B was designed to provide the support this population requires. 

            English 83B was created for students who have earned credit in English 83A, but who need further development in vocabulary and comprehension skills before advancing to English 84R (7^th/8^th grade reading).  Students placing in English 83B need further work in skills using context clues, drawing inferences, and distinguishing between fact and opinion.  In addition, students in English 83B focus on monitoring their reading, strengthening time management based on the evaluation of their performance in English 83A, and improving study reading techniques, such as mapping.

            Future plans to change some sections of C-level courses from  sixteen weeks to eight weeks are in progress and will need to be further studied, in conjunction with the basic skills writing instructors.  Students often complete reading/writing with better success in a more concentrated schedule.  Our challenge will be in defining lab times for each of the classes in ways that do not overwhelm students with the number of hours they must be on campus. 

            With the doubling of the number of reading courses offered, the reading lab (Drescher 312) has sought to accommodate the increase in students using its facilities.  Since 1999, the lab has acquired 17 more computers all of which have Windows, Internet access, Ultimate Speed Reader, How to Spell, Reading for Understanding, Inspiration 6, and Townsend Press practices.  Joyce Cheney has updated the Reading Lab website.

B Level Course Sequence

            Our curriculum for this level has not changed since our last self study, and the course sequence continues to focus on pre-collegiate essay writing skills.  About 40 percent of entering students place at this level. Enrollment growth is astonishing. We have seen a doubling in the number of English 21A sections and 70 percent growth in number of 21B offerings since our last self-study. 

            Procedures for the Common Essay, which were described in our last review, have changed slightly.  MIS support in the scoring process was costly, and the logistics were cumbersome.  Instructors complained that the all-day Saturday grading was too tiring, and we began to see attrition in the number of faculty scorers.  Papers, identified by bar codes, had to be sorted and grouped by instructor at the end of the day, another time-consuming process.  Because of the number of complaints, faculty were surveyed about the system.  While there was support for keeping the Common Essay, the there was majority support only if we could arrive at a kinder, gentler process.  Norming now takes place for two hours on a Friday afternoon and a system of paper exchange has been developed so that instructors at assigned tables trade student papers and take them home over the weekend to score them; they exchange them once more with identified second readers at the beginning of the following week, then return the papers to their “home” instructor within the next couple of days.  While the process has eliminated complete anonymity and variety of readers, it seems to have provided a workable compromise.  We now have a template for the Common Essay process and instructors from both English and ESL rotate its coordination and oversight.

THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT IN THE COLLEGE MISSION AND GOALS

Academic Exellence and Faculty

            The English department is a faculty rich in talent, range of capacities, and experience.  Among us are instructors with expertise in composition/rhetoric, reading, grammar, learning disabilities, educational diagnosis, basic skills and literacy science, English secondary schooling and teacher preparation, linguistics, second language learning, creative writing, and literature.  In other words, we have remarkable internal resources to meet the educational challenges that face us.            

            Program reductions and the uncertainties caused by changing enrollment patterns have been taxing on morale overall and especially for part-time faculty.  In summer 2004 we hired rapidly to meet enrollment growth, bringing 43 new hourly teachers onto our faculty only to have to lay 12 of them off in the spring when we cancelled classes due to under enrollments.  Currently our part-time faculty number 87.  Projected fall enrollment growth will swell our numbers once again, however, and we are rehiring most of our layoffs.  We can expect to be a faculty of over 125 again by fall.  

            Still, we are fortunate that we enjoy collegiality and mutual respect, and we feel a vital part of the college mission.  Our commitment to student access is evident in our willingness to engage the college’s aggressive goal to re-grow enrollment, and we have worked with Student Services, Academic Affairs, and constituencies across campus to support that effort.  In addition to our commitment to classroom and curriculum development, our deep engagement in the life of the college and the profession is evident in our involvement in Academic Senate and Faculty Association, as well as in our sponsorship of student clubs and events (see Notable Achievements below). 

            Since our last program review, when we had a full-time faculty of 26 instructors, we have experienced significant changes.  A number of faculty have retired, and we are glad that all of these have continued as adjunct faculty.  We are especially grateful that Nina Theiss, who was our chair for 32 years, has continued to be a mentor and a presence.  Other retirees are Don Doten, Charles Donaldson, Sharon Steeber, and Anthony Diniro.  Two instructors--Frances Kurilich, and Karin Costello—have gone on  50 percent limited retirement and Lyle Larsen on 80 percent.  Jill Peacock has left on disability.  Meanwhile, Gayle Davis-Culp returned to the department after several years as TRIO administrator, and we have hired Judith Remmes, Wil Doucet, Jean Gorgie, Jim Pacchioli, Gilda Feldman, Tim Cramer, Stefan Mattessich, Dana Morgan, Lantz Simpson, and Ed Markarian—seven composition/literature and three reading instructors.  Even though English has been fortunate in its hires, the fiscal state of the college has not allowed us to keep pace with growth; we have lost the equivalent of seven instructors and added eleven; seemingly we are +4.  However, as we have complained in both of our previous reviews, hiring has not kept pace with faculty attrition and English enrollment growth, and the department relies more heavily than ever on part-time faculty to teach the bulk of its high demand courses.  As we prepared our fall 2004 hiring request, we calculated that we would need 21 new full-time instructors in the classroom if the state required AB 1725 compliance at the

department level! 

            The ratio of full-time to part-time faculty teaching assignments, as we calculated it in fall 2004, is included in the appendix.  As the data reflects, an astonishingly high number of our C and B level classes, over 80 percent, are taught by part-time instructors.  Overall, (in actuality, given full-timers’ reassigned time) part-timers teach nearly 70 percent of our total course offerings. 

            Fortunately, Santa Monica College generally enjoys a reputation for a committed student body, fair working conditions, and competitive hourly pay, so it has always drawn a highly talented and dedicated part-time faculty.  But to coordinate programs when the greatest part of the faculty feels tangential is challenging. 

The department ensures uniformity of instruction across sections of courses by providing every new hire with an orientation packet that includes course outlines of record, sample syllabi, course rubrics and exit skill criteria, faculty evaluation criteria, and campus resources information (library, counseling information, etc.).  Also, we gather into binders copies of all instructors’ syllabi and make these available in the department office to all our colleagues (as well as students).  The syllabi are reviewed by peer evaluators and by the chair or assistant chair to be sure that instructors are following the course outline of record.  Also, we have standardized textbooks for core courses taught by new faculty and for late-add classes.  New instructors are required to use the standard texts for an academic year, after which they may request a change from the chair or assistant chair.  We will survey new instructors to determine how the texts worked for them and use this to revise our choices.   At the C-level this step toward standardization has had the effect of accomplishing near uniformity in textbook selection across the program as we adopted the Langan writing series used already by most veteran teachers.   Reading teachers had established core textbooks for classes, including the Langan series, Sharon Steeber’s Reading Faster, Understanding More series, and the Townsend Press vocabulary building series that includes software support (available in the reading lab).  Reading faculty have also developed a list of suggested novels appropriate to levels. 

In fall 2004 we took a step toward initiating peer mentoring.  While we have a long way to go to fulfill our intention of giving newer faculty timely, helpful, and regular support, we have made a significant beginning.  More than 40 new adjunct faculty came on at once last fall.  We used our faculty flex day at the opening of the semester to welcome them, introducing peer mentors for reading and for each level of composition. We also invited the dean of Judicial Affairs to talk about how to set up syllabi to create a classroom climate conducive to learning.  Although we intended to match every new faculty member with a peer mentor who might have a similar schedule, given the overwhelming number of new hires and our day-to-day workload, that plan proved a bit ambitious. We were able to do this for only about a dozen of our new hires. We did, however, distribute the task of their evaluation among experienced faculty and tried in this at least to match people with similar teaching assignments and goals.  Overall, we found this to be a good experience for all of us and classroom observations led, quite naturally in most cases, to collegial relationships and sharing of classroom strategies. 

            We scheduled C-level meetings and some workshops for English faculty, as well as several department colloquiums around matters of professional interest.  English faculty have taken a central responsibility in Professional Day workshops as well, presenting material and facilitating discussions on such topics as reading comprehension, academic honesty, student success and retention strategies, essay grading, writing across the curriculum, journal writing, creative writing, distance education delivery, information literacy competency, and so on. 

            Part-timers often use these professional development activities as part of their flex time.  Most apply office hours toward their flex activity requirement.  We wholly advocate every instructor’s holding office hours, but we would like to see other institutional support for this. 

            Since our last program review, part-time faculty who teach five or more units of composition in a semester have gained the right to compensation for an office hour per week.  While this has been a step forward, inequity yet exists in the policy.  Many instructors give their students far more than an hour per week of their time outside the classroom (this is especially true of instructors teaching nine units), and the policy makes no office hour provisions for reading teachers.  Given that many students in our reading classes are significantly under prepared for college and would benefit from more instructor contact hours, we would support a revision of the policy to include reading classes among those mentioned in the part-timers’ office hours policy.  While most instructors can and do claim extra meeting time with students as flex time, we believe that this is often necessarily at the expense of professional development opportunities and department meetings.

            The lack of professional development money has been frustrating to all of us.  The department used to encourage wide participation and representation of SMC English faculty at the state ECCTYC, TYCA, and CCCC conferences, as well as at MLA, but that was when we could expect some funding.  While several instructors have presented at or attended ECCTYC, SMC no longer has the profile it once had when some of our faculty served on boards and committees of English professional organizations, and we especially miss the interaction with English faculty from two-year colleges statewide.  We continue to allocate money in our budget for every faculty member to receive Inside English, the ECCTYC journal.  Several of our faculty, including Lawrence Driscoll and Sandra Powazek, are published there.  

Course Retention Patterns and Student Success

            Overall, retention rate for English classes was 81 percent, as revealed in the TIMS report.  Data on retention and success levels for English 1 and developmental courses in 1992, 1997, and 2002 is reported in the Appendix tables and is broken down by ethnicity; the ratio of students with disability to non-disabled is also shown.  Data reported for 81B before 2002 cannot be effectively compared with previous years’ 81B success rates as we have since restructured the C-level curriculum (thus the 81B of 1992 and 1997 is more equivalent to today’s 84W).  The tables seem to confirm that attrition compounds, especially for disabled students, as students move through the basic skills course sequence so that few students are arriving at the B level.  In fact, success rates at the C-level are dismal overall and as a group our African-American students are not faring well at all.

            The table below draws data from the TIMS report for last semester.  Retention rates are broken down by full-time (FT) and part-time (PT) faculty, first, as they are presented in TIMS.  We also looked at success rates as reported and when W’s are factored out.

Retention and Success Rates Fall 2004

Across the data above and in appendix tables, success rates in basic skills writing raise questions.  To better understand how our C-level students are moving through the sequence of courses, we tracked fall 2004 final grades and instructor recommendations for next course; they are recorded on the Mastery List kept in the basic skills writing lab. These were compiled into the following table: 

Fall 2004 Enrollment Statistics

C-Level Classes

Several things in this data strike us and also raise questions:

• the nearly equal numbers of students enrolled in 81 and 83A.  We credit both Assessment Center and Counseling with helping us to achieve our goal of getting all 81A and 83A students to take these courses concurrently.  Not only did more entering students than ever take the assessment test, but Welcome Center also advised those placing at C level into the course pair.

• the number of students moving directly from 81A to 21A and the number of students moving directly from 83A to 23.  Can we develop placement cut-off scores that could separate the most ready students into 84W and 84R, instead of starting all students at the same point? 

• the number of students that are recommended for 81B compared with the number recommended for its co-requisite, 83B, which is significantly higher.  Why?  At least two reasons strike us:  students naturally make more rapid progress in their reading skills, and perhaps our rubric needs to make the distinction between 81B and 84W readiness clearer.

• The low success rates of 84W and 84R students.  Why are students not persisting or succeeding at this point? 

These are all issues for us to study, with the help of the Office of Institutional Research.  Three years ago, as part of the University of Southern California’s Equity Scorecard project, the dean of Institutional Effectiveness studied subsequent enrollments in SMC English classes from 1991 to 1995.  This study showed that about half of our C-level students later went on to enroll in English 21A, and that 30 percent went on to enroll in English 1 (see Appendix).  Another longitudinal study seems in order, especially as we would like to know whether changes in the basic skills curriculum and the greater emphasis on reading are impacting success rates.

            Likewise, we have work to do to help us better serve B-level students.  English 21A is the entry point for the greatest number of our students, about 40 percent.  Last fall, we met with Esau Tovar in the Assessment Center to begin the plan for validating the Common Essay.  We contacted ESL department to work with us in that effort, but given the constraints of the times, we were unable to make progress.  We would like to set a goal that we will create a plan and follow through with it in the coming year.  In conjunction with this study, we would also like to work with the Office of Institutional Research in tracking our B-level population to discover how many of our students move directly from English 21A to English 1 and, by comparison, what the success rates are in English 1 for students who have taken English 21B.  As we work on our learning outcomes, we see a need to make the distinctions between English 21A and 21B clearer.  Finally, we would like to know what impact if any the completion of English 23 has on student performance in their other English classes.  Do students who take English 23 in conjunction with their B level composition classes do better in English 1 than students who do not?  

            Another area that must be addressed, as pointed out in the last Accreditation Self-Study, is the area of tutoring.  Especially, how can we improve our tutoring support for B-level students, given that less-experienced and at risk students are least likely to take advantage of it?  

            There has also been much discussion among faculty about our evaluation standards for English 1.  As incidences of plagiarism and on-line editing help seem to occur more frequently, instructors have been asking, how much should we base evaluation on in-class writing and how much on out-of-class essays?  We have talked about the possibility of a Common Essay for English 1, but the idea never gets much off the ground; the logistics of such implementation bog us down. ETS, however, claims to have had great success with software it has developed to score essays.  We have received a demonstration copy of it and will investigate this further to see whether it holds any possibilities for us.  

            As we study each level of our programs and especially our pre-transfer sequences, we are trying to identify classroom practices that encourage success and persistence.  We have shared the results that came out of the Student Success Project (Dean John Gonzalez has described these in his paper on retention strategies).  Through the SCORE project, English has also worked with Math and Counseling to identify strategies for success.  These are described in a SCORE report included

in the  Appendix.    

            As a result of the enthusiasm for paired classes, the English department in fall 2005 will be participating in the FYI Learning Communities Title V grant designed to enhance and improve the teaching, learning, and retention of first-year college students.  Classes are organized into the following learning communities: 

            Reading and Writing Connections

 Career Stories and Tools for Student Success 

                        Windows to College Writing           

English would also like to work in clearer partnership with all special programs.  We have offered course sections in Black Collegians, Adelante/Latino, Women’s College, Environmental College, Scholars, SCORE, and EOPS.  However, because some of the classes have not been successful in drawing target populations (necessitating our opening enrollment to all or, in the worst cases, to canceling classes), we see a need to reconsider our aims, methods, and infrastructures. Given their potential to support at-risk students, we would particularly like to work with special programs to do the following:

• to re-articulate goals for classes in the programs,
• to identify the roles and resources of the programs,
• to define the roles and responsibilities of the teachers in special-program sections, and
• to agree on follow-up measures that would be appropriate for evaluating our success in meeting the students’ needs.

We would like to suggest that the Student Success Project and SCORE modeled this clarity and relationship between instruction and student services.   

Effective Use of Technology

Web Access

            Dana Del George has taken on the responsibility of revising and updating the department web page, and is supported in that by our department secretary, Joanne Laurance.  She has met with Ellen Cutler to review access issues pertaining to our web page.  This spring English faculty were asked to complete the Web Page Accessibility Survey, and Ellen Cutler came to a department meeting to educate us about web page access issues.  Those faculty who have been teaching in distance education or using eCompanion report that the eCollege systems are generally user friendly and support their instruction.  

Distance Education

            When we wrote our last review, the department seemed tentative about technologically mediated instruction.  So much has changed since then!  The English department made its initial entrance into distance education with an English 1 class in the spring 2000.  We decided to grow slowly so as to ensure the quality of our courses and their adherence to our on-ground standards.  Deciding to focus at first on core classes, we added an English 2 class in the fall of 2000.  In 2001, ready to expand our offerings, we added English 48 (Speed Reading and College Vocabulary) and, seeking to offer an American Cultures course, we brought English 10 (Ethnic Literature in America) online that same semester.  In spring 2005 we brought English 5 (British Literature) online.  Currently our online program is quite robust.  In the spring 2005 semester, the English department offered six sections of English 1, seven sections of English 2, and one section each of English 48 and 5.  We also now regularly offer two hybrid English 1’s per semester; the hybrids meet three hours every Saturday and for three hours online each week.  Just this month the department approved three new online courses: English 51 and 52 (Bible as Literature, Old and New Testaments) and English 31 (Advanced Composition), which we anticipate offering in fall 2005.

            From the inception, the English department’s online instructors have worked together, supporting one another and mentoring each new recruit to the online environment.  They have given one another access to their courses in order to share ideas, formatting techniques, and workaround solutions for the technological foibles of our platform.  They also maintain an ongoing conversation via email to keep everyone current on the myriad technological quirks of our system and to combat the sense of isolation inherent in online teaching.  The online English faculty would like increased support from the administration in order to continue and even formalize this valuable mentoring process. 

            We have also worked to establish and maintain relationships with online faculty in other disciplines, and to represent online English faculty campus-wide.  Currently, the Distance Education Committee is chaired by a member of the English department.  The visibility of the English department in the distance education program is valuable as the needs of online English instructors are quantifiably different from the needs of instructors in other disciplines.  We are committed to ensuring that the unique needs of the English instructors are represented in campus-wide discussions about online policies and procedures.  Currently, the members of the English department online faculty, in conjunction with Distance Education administrators, are working to implement an effective online system for tutoring our students.  We anticipate that this will be a large project that will require our attention for quite some time.  We appreciate the administration’s understanding of the need to address the online students’

tutorial needs. 

            Further administrative understanding of the online environment is important in other areas as well.  Just as special programs’ English class sizes are smaller because instructor workload is expected to be greater, so online classes would benefit from being smaller, since they require the instructor to do much more reading, reviewing, and scoring of written student work than do conventional courses.  Additionally, online instructors should receive some reassigned time when teaching a course for the first time, even when that course has already been taught online, because English instructors must create their own course content, which is too individual to be copied and shared among colleagues.  Finally, the census date to calculate enrollment should be earlier in online courses than in conventional ones.  If attrition rates are higher in online courses, it may be because students cannot hide in these courses.  In order to appear present online students must write everything that their counterparts in a conventional class need only speak.  This unfamiliar accountability and increased writing requirement is sometimes a surprise and disappointment to students who have made the mistake of assuming that online courses will be easier than conventional ones.  These students often drop by the end of the first week, when in a compressed course it is no longer fair to add new students, who will not have time to catch up. 

            English has been well represented and active on the Academic Senate’s Distance Education Committee and this is a real positive since the delivery needs for English differ markedly from those of other departments, such as Business. 

We deeply appreciate and enjoy the support of Julie Yarrish in the Distance Education office.  Her good-humored support and encouragement have served us well in negotiating the challenges of online teaching and expanding our distance education course offerings.  With Marilyn Simon, she has done much to help us work through the logistics of getting our online classes up and running. 

Technology Needs for Basic Skills Writing and Reading

            Two years ago a department request for computer “cascades” in Drescher 215, 308, and 312 received full approval.  We now have seven computers with internet access in room 308, the basic skills lab.  Reading teachers wanted the computers in their reading classroom (Drescher 215), to support instruction.  As of today, we are still awaiting that technology.  Although we have been told the hardware is available, it has yet to be hooked up, even though we conceded internet access to facilitate their installation.  We were dismayed to learn that the electrical configuration of Drescher 312 will not allow us to add more stations in our reading lab.  While we appreciate that other areas of campus have funding sources because of the nature of their programs, English finds itself often at the bottom of technology consideration.  We hope to be able to solve our space and technology issues before our next program review.  To do that, we will need to work together with other disciplines and administration to commit technology resources toward improving fundamental reading and writing skills for all students across campus. 

            The reading lab in Drescher 312 depends on technology.  Since 1999, it has acquired seventeen more computers. Computers are also loaded with Windows, Ultimate Speed Reader, How to Spell, Inspiration 6, and Townsend Press practices. Joyce Cheney, lab coordinator, expended great effort in writing Reading for Understanding (RFU) materials for online use, with permission from the publisher. (Reading programs throughout the country now link to SMC for access to these materials).  But in the lab we need hardware upgrades that include audio capabilities and headphones to be able to fully utilize what these programs and materials can offer our students. 

Computer Lab Classrooms

            Originally designated as computer lab classrooms for English, Drescher 203 and 204 are shared with ESL and Communications (although in the last year Communications has begun using AET facilities for most of its journalism classes).  The hardware in these rooms has become dated and inadequate to serve our needs. The units lack audio capacities or the memory to drive software systems like Plato, which could support English reading and writing instruction.  There is no instructor station, and there are only 35 PC’s in the classroom, any one of which breaks down on occasion, necessitating sharing.  The instructor has no dedicated monitor, and the PC’s are not networked to allow the instructor to freeze them (shutting students off from their email messaging) or to view each from a central station.  The digital monitor is rather clumsy to use, since the instructor must stand at the podium (under the projection screen), where the remote control is secured.  Ideally, instructors would like the technology to match that of the library computer classroom. 

Multi-Media Cart

            The department now has a multi-media cart which allows instructors to utilize various software programs (such as PowerPoint, the Internet, Ultimate Speed Reader, and Tegrity) as instructional aids.  The cart gets frequent and consistent use.

Electronic Waiver System

            The electronic waiver system instituted by Enrollment Services has made it easier for students to deal directly with the English department in matters of English placement.  Although it has increased the department chair’s responsibility—the chair must input all prerequisite waivers into ISIS—it has served students well for the most part, in that students no longer get shunted between the Admissions counter, Counseling, and the department for prerequisite waivers.  Almost all English faculty now know the system.  Counseling, English, and Enrollment Services have established clear protocols and procedures that have become increasingly effective in ensuring that students matriculate appropriately.  We appreciate the support of Enrollment Services and MIS in implementing this change. 

Community Partnerships

The English department has created community partnerships by:

• Developing relationships with high schools:
•  It has developed dual enrollment programs at present Taft and CAMS.  By fall 2005, it should be offering English classes at Carson High and Palisades High schools. 
• In 1999-2000, The Writing Assistant Project trained and placed SMC students as tutors at Santa Monica High School. 

• Hosting ACTOR.  The troop of five actors from the London stage, funded by SMC Associates, staged two performances of Romeo and Juliet in spring 2004, both sell-out performances for the community and SMC students. 
• Hosting at least three literary events—readings by published authors, as well as SMC faculty writers and students—per semester; these are open to the public.  In May 2005 we will be hosting Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, a Santa Monica Citywide book selection. 
• Offering reading groups that take place on campus and at the Santa Monica Public Library; these are for the community as well as interested students.

We are also pursuing a plan to partner with a local bookstore to offer regular reading groups. Part of this effort is an attempt to reach out to potential returning students, the adult population who used to infuse our night classes with enthusiasm and diversity of life experience.

Scheduling Patterns and Class Size

Scheduling       

            English has a thriving daytime and evening enrollment.  We have successfully offered 6:30 a.m. English 1 and English 21A classes (one section of each) each semester for several years, and we could probably add a few more of these (students say they arrive that early to find parking anyway), had we more faculty interest in teaching at that time.  We offer two or more sections each of English 1 and 2 on Saturdays, and at least one “weekend college” English 1 class that meets Friday nights (6:30-9:35 p.m.) and Saturday mornings (9:00 a.m.-12:05 p.m.) in summer and winter sessions.  Although we have also offered English 2 in this weekend pattern, it seems not to work as well since students have little “turn around” time to accomplish the reading in a compressed class. 

            Our success with distance education has already been described (see above, under Effective Use of Technology, Distance Education, above).  We have also experimented with hybrid classes, thinking that they would have appeal for a working population of returning students.  They have not been as successful as we had anticipated. In the hybrid configuration, the class meets in eight-week sessions, once a week for three hours, then meets three hours online in the same week.  The English 1 hybrids that we offered on weekdays drew lower enrollment than the Saturday classes, so we have discontinued the weekday offerings.  The Saturday classes now enroll fully, but there does not seem to be sufficient demand to add more classes.  Perhaps this is because of a statewide decline in returning student population and maybe it is because we have not yet effectively marketed hybrid classes.  We would like to work with Counseling and public relations to see whether we can identify ways that might better promote them.  We can imagine that the hybrid format would be a good match for English 2 classes, for example, where threaded discussions of literature could take the place of classroom discussion, engaging every student.  Yet instructors would still have necessary classroom time to work with students on the composition components of the class and do in-class writing.

            We are also studying the possibility, as mentioned earlier, of increasing our offering of eight-week classes (see C-Level Reading and Lab above). We surmise that the intensity of compressed classes, the longer and more regular class meeting times, is beneficial to our basic skills and developmental level students.  Next fall, we will be offering a greater number of compressed classes, especially for entering B-level students.  Many of these students are disappointed when they receive assessment scores placing them below transfer level.  That it may take them two semesters to prepare for English 1 is discouraging, especially to those who were successful high school English students.  We have talked with Counseling and Welcome Center about especially encouraging these B-level students into eight-week classes.  We are also looking at ways to offer more C-level compressed classes, but we must solve the lab situation first (quite frankly, the galloping pace at which we had to create the fall schedule hardly gave us any time for reflection on this).  Each basic skills class in reading and writing has a lab component.  Doubling the class meeting time and the lab time to fit the courses into eight weeks creates real scheduling challenges for students in regular semesters.  As the lab is currently configured, we also do not have the writing lab space to accommodate both eight-week and sixteen-week classes.

            Eight-week classes for English 1 and 2 thrive, especially in fall, when students seem especially conscious of getting their IGETC requirements finished and posted to their transcripts.  Although we are open to offering more eight-week transfer level classes, we would like to study current enrollment patterns to determine whether these encourage success and persistence, or whether eight weeks classes (especially those offered in the second eight weeks) are being filled by students who drop in the first eight-week session. 

            English has always scheduled classes wherever space allows.  For decades now, we have offered classes on satellite campuses.  Last spring we experienced our greatest difficulty in filling our Airport campus classes, particularly, we think, because students could not make a schedule for themselves there.  (We had more luck when Math and Art also offered classes on that campus.)   So English is anticipating that the opening of the Bundy campus will actually serve our enrollment.  Now that a number of other departments will be offering classes at the Airport complex, we expect students might even be eager to schedule their classes nearer their free parking.  For fall, then, we have scheduled both developmental and transfer level classes--three per daytime time slot--at the Bundy site.  To support those classes we will be working with other disciplines and services to ensure that students at the Airport complex have appropriate support.  Tutoring and lab considerations will need to be addressed, and we will need to provide strategies to maximize students’ access to campus resources.  English classes, for example, will need access to library materials.  Although a wealth of library resources can be accessed online, we will need reserve materials and classroom resource material at the satellite.

            In fall 2005, English will be offering a total of 13 classes on the main campus during the activity hour.  Nearly all of these will be scheduled in Drescher Hall and all will be taught by part-time faculty. 

Class Size

            English composition classes are capped at 25 students when they are taught by part-time faculty or in select special programs, such as Black Collegians, Latino/Adelante, and Scholars.  Full-time faculty generally fulfill their load requirements (15 WTH/week) by making their composition classes “oversize” at 35 students.  Recognizing that the class size serves their students and conscious of the need for colleagues also to make their loads, instructors do not for the most part over enroll their classes.  

Instructional Climate

            Office space contributes to instructional climate and collegiality, and, given the size of the department, we just do not have enough of it.  More than a third of our full-timers have doubled up to share offices, and most of these make room for a part-timer, too.  Nearly every full-timer shares his or her office with at least one part-timer.  The situation of part-timers’ office hours has been addressed above (See Academic Excellence and Faculty above).  The space issue addressed in our last program review has not been solved and has, in fact, compounded with our growth.

            Large as we are--spread across four campuses and offering classes day, nights, and weekends--one of the challenges we face, quite simply, is communication.  We must rely increasingly on email as being our fastest and easiest way to communicate, but we ask a lot of adjunct faculty who may not be so able to check their messages on a daily basis.  One sympathizes.  Adjunct faculty who are teaching on several campuses balance much, not the least of which is maintaining several email addresses, a challenge especially for those with dial-up service working from home because we have not been able to provide them with ready computer access.  We are grateful to have a department secretary to manage the timely delivery and receipt of paperwork. 

            Our size also makes it difficult to schedule department meetings.  Invariably, given the many activities that English faculty are engaged in, we create schedule conflicts.  We rely on the activity hour as a meeting time, although it is not a good time for anyone in the leadership of either faculty organization, and it generally creates a conflict for student club sponsors.  We have found that small breakout meetings for specific purposes are necessary to getting the work of the department done.  Instructors within programs schedule meetings so that their greatest number can attend, sometimes creating TTh and MW meetings in the same week to accommodate part-time faculty.

SUPPORT FOR THE PROGRAM

Personnel

            The department has a full-time secretary, essential to its operations.  Joanne Laurance has been in her position now for ten years.  She not only keeps track of payroll issues and paperwork, but manages much of the logistics of the department, in addition to being the department receptionist.

            Seven permanent 20 hour/week instructional assistants (IA’s) staff the basic skills writing lab, down two from the number we had before the 2003-2004 budget cuts.   One permanent IA staffs the reading lab.  Ideally, for next fall we will hire three additional permanent IA’s, two for the basic skills writing lab and another to help staff the reading lab and serve as a “floater” when the writing lab is especially busy.   With our growing enrollments, we have had challenges staffing the lab, which serves day and evening students.  The hiring process for classified employees has proven frustrating to us.  Personnel Commission takes too long, for our needs, to certify candidates and schedule interviews.  In April 2004, for example, we received approval for a permanent IA to begin in August.  It was December before interviews were complete and the person started her job.  Meanwhile we had hired uncertified temporary IA’s whom we had to let go, because none of them were certified at the end of the term, when we finally had “the list” of candidates from which we had to choose.  This spring 2005—at the end of April—we finally were able to interview candidates from “the list” and they will be able to work for us—till June 30!   We feel as if we can never get ahead of this classified hiring system, and the truth is, we are at a complete loss as to how to remedy it.  But we must find solutions or be continually handicapped in providing instructional support

for our students.   

            Now it remains for us to identify a person as the basic skills lab coordinator.  That job used to belong to a full-time basic skills writing instructor.  She received 20 percent reassigned time for supervising the IA’s, making their schedules, and being the liaison between basic skills instructors and the lab staff.  That role has since fallen on the chair.  To have the lab coordinated by an instructor seemed to work well. An alternative would be to have a full-time lab coordinator.  We would like the new basic skills full-time instructor to help set the direction for the lab, and we expect him/her to provide some input on this matter.

            The reading lab has one permanent IA who works Monday through Thursday 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.  She works with reading students who use the lab on a drop-in basis to complete the contract work assigned by the classroom instructor.  The IA also provides assistance to the English 80 reading class, which meets in the lab five hours per week.  Every 80 student works on a self-paced plan designed by the instructor.  Students with learning and other disabilities require one-on-one help.  When his schedule has allowed, Elisha Shapiro, a reading/LD specialist and IA in the basic skills writing lab, assists.  Ideally, we would have another IA regularly available in the lab at peak hours, Fridays, and during English 80 class meetings. 

            Joyce Cheney coordinates the Reading Lab.   She makes the lab schedule, assigning student workers to help as desk receptionists as needed.  Joyce also provides orientations to every reading class.  Because the reading program has grown substantially, we are considering new ways of conducting orientations so that she is not required to tailor an introduction to the lab for each class.  Perhaps we can address students’ needs by offering hourly orientations in the first weeks of school and requiring sign-ups. 

            In addition to coordinating the Reading Lab, Joyce coordinates the adjacent Humanities Tutoring Lab.  She hires, trains, and schedules student tutors, as she has explained in her Humanities Tutoring Center report.  For several years, Joyce also trained and mentored the Writing Assistants, a group of upper division college students, most from UCLA, who were assigned as aides to English faculty in the classroom and who tutored their students.  Funding for Writing Assistants was cut in 2003 and English faculty would like to see the program restored.   

Facilities

            The English department is located in Drescher Hall where it has many of its classrooms.  The office space allotted us in Drescher was never enough, and six full-time faculty have offices in Library Village and Letters and Sciences.  Temperature control in Drescher is confounding and, although Maintenance has checked it various times, no remedy has been found; offices at the west end of the hall are frigid, sometimes below 55 degrees, even when the heat is on.  In the summer those offices get too much air-conditioning, while the front offices, especially those on the inside are hot and stuffy.  Classroom temperatures can likewise be uncomfortable.  We continue to complain about acoustics in these classrooms, too, and about the lack of windows in classroom doors, which creates safety and security issues.

            Our most serious problem, however, is the building elevator.  There is only one, and it has been unreliable since it was installed.  This spring it broke down, again, and parts had to be ordered; it was out of service for a week.  This created more than inconvenience for us because many basic skills classes and both basic skills labs are in Drescher Hall.  It happens that a significant number of our basic skills students are disabled.  One instructor cancelled class labs for a week because every student’s needs could not be accommodated.  Instructors complained that they could not introduce new material because so many students could not come to class.  Instructors and students were frustrated.  A student in an electronic wheelchair asked campus police to take him up to class to be told that they will come to carry a student out of a building, but that they cannot come to take someone into a building.  Of course, this makes sense, but the wheelchair bound students were frustrated.

            This situation raised a bigger concern of access for us.  In case of real emergency, how could we faculty work together to get our students out of the building?  The recent elevator situation prompted several basic skills instructors to suggest that they be moved to first floor classrooms permanently.  The situation certainly heightened for us the need to know the evacuation plan and to define a plan for the department that we include in the orientation packet for new instructors. 

            Space is always an issue for our department.  We need more classrooms than are usually allocated to us at peak hours, especially on the main campus.  Basic skills and reading classes must be scheduled on main campus because of the lab support the classes require.  As enrollment in C-level grows, it squeezes other classes out of classrooms and over to satellite campuses.  Basic skills has also outgrown its lab space and we need to define an adjacent space. The lab is almost completely booked by 81A classes, pushing drop-in tutoring for English 81B and 84W into the small annex next door in 309, a space also used by part-time faculty for office hours.  Reading teachers have requested another study room for small group reading tutorials and conversations; the one in the reading lab is in frequent use. We do not seem to have the ability to accommodate more technology in any of the labs, including the Humanities Tutoring Lab.  The development of a campus plan to solve tutoring needs seems crucial.

            As the Bundy site is being planned, we would like consideration for adequate lab space on that site.  One possible solution is an integrated lab, equipped with technology and software to serve the needs of several departments.  Some community colleges have used Title V money to equip such labs with Plato and other software.  With Bundy opening this summer, it seems timely for the disciplines concerned to work with administration to consider options. 

LOGISTICAL PROBLEMS

            The earlier opening of the student enrollment periods has created a logistical problem for English.  The situation is further complicated by the simultaneous opening of summer and fall, or of winter and spring enrollment periods.  The Common Essay and C-level mastery exams occur in the twelfth week and later in the semester, after enrollments have opened.  Placement rosters for spring 2005 were due on May 6.  However, the Common Essay results will be available on May 23, when the scoring period has completed.  In the meantime, teachers have to take their best guess as to whether students will be ready to move to the next level of English, or even whether they will be ready to move to English 1, necessitating prerequisite waivers.  C-level instructors are concerned that if they allow their students to register for the next level of English too early, the students will stop coming to class.  C-level writing teachers have a particularly difficult time judging whether their students will be ready for English 81B or 84W because the last month of the semester is where they say they see the most gains.  Ideally, from our perspective, final grades would override placement rosters, and the college computer management system could drop students from classes for which they had not completed the prerequisite or received a waiver. 

PROGRAM COMPLETION

            Transfer-bound students take English 1 and 2 as part of their IGETC requirements.  Currently, students seeking an AA degree must complete English 21B.  However, last April the state Academic Senate recommended to the Chancellor’s office that transfer level English be required for the AA degree in all community colleges.  We expect that change to become official and for English1 to become the required English course for the two-year degree.  This will affect some students--ironically, probably the ones who most care to get an AA degree.  Currently, the college offers two kinds of AA degrees, the traditional one and the transfer AA that is automatically awarded to students who complete their IGETC units.  Curriculum Committee reported that of the 992 students who received the traditional AA degree in 2003-2004, 82 percent completed English 1.  Of the F-1 students in that cohort, 75 percent completed English 1 (only 80 out of 318 students received their degree with ESL 21B/English 21B only). Thus, to raise the AA requirement at SMC from English/ESL 21B to English 1 does not seem as if it will have significant impact in terms of numbers: 

Transfer AA vs. Traditional AA Count

FINAL OUTCOMES OF THE PROGRAM

            One of our primary goals is that students who go through our English programs will be effective writers and perceptive readers so that they will succeed in their academic, occupational, and life endeavors.  Since the majority of our students indicate that transfer is their goal, we could look at success after transfer as a final outcome.  We have some evidence of success.  We know this:

• Brenda Johnson-Benson and Frankie Santos Laanan’s research of the college’s  UCLA transfer students’ success indicates that 64.2% of SMC students generally feel that SMC writing assignments (in all classes) prepared them for their university work  (Tranfer Readiness Research and Follow-Up Practices, © Santa Monica College, 1999, p. 27).  
• Johnson and Laanan also note that it was more likely that our transfer students in five universities who were surveyed about their SMC experience reported it was mostly their English classes that engaged them in writing research papers, instructed them in critical thinking, writing skills, and the importance of revision in writing, and taught them to write with a plan (p. 53).  These were skills that were identified as important to their success.
• Anecdotal evidence provided by UCLA and LMU English professors suggests that SMC English majors are some of their “most exceptional” and “deep-thinking” students.  We are proud that, according to Transfer Center’s research, we transferred 48 English majors to UCLA last year.  Our students who stay in touch with us report that they are succeeding, although some of them miss the smaller classes and greater instructor contact they had at SMC.
• And some of our former students, most recently Judith Remmes and Elise Geraghty, have come back after graduate school to be our colleagues.  We think they’re terrific!  

Of students who are going into occupational programs, we know this:

• Data collected in our alliance with Nursing confirms that nursing students who have passed English 1 at SMC generally have reading comprehension and writing skills that support them to succeed in that highly accelerated program.  This is important because students who are deficient in their English skills are at risk. 

About what happens to our basic skills students who never make it to English 1, or even to 21A, we don’t know much, but we do know this: 

• Among them is a thirty-something year old father who has been motivated to return to school so that he can read to his three-year-old daughter.  He may be the least of our successes.  After two semesters with us, he is still struggling.  But he is trying, and he drives all the way from Hollywood because the community college and adult schools in his area do not offer reading.  He just may be our best reason for being. 

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Among the things that we as English faculty and staff will do: 

• As we have said in each of the previous program review reports:  we will work within campus processes to improve our full-time to part-time faculty ratio. 
• We will continue to work together to refine and develop student learning outcomes for all English courses and programs. 
• We will continue to pursue enrollment strategies with Enrollment Services and Counseling/Welcome Center to facilitate persistence of students, especially at the C and B levels. 
• We will work in partnership with special programs to serve students by clarifying our roles and responsibilities and evaluating our progress. 
• We will work to support Instructional Assistants in the basic skills lab to develop procedures and Lab Book revisions that provide strong and effective support to classroom instruction.
• We will continue gathering C-level data on persistence and success and how basic skills students matriculate so that we can evaluate curriculum and retention strategies.
•  We will work with Assessment Center to determine whether ACCUPLACER assessment cut-off scores are feasible for English 84W and 84R.   
• We will work with other disciplines and programs (including Nursing, Math, ESL, non-credit, and occupational programs) to pursue an integrated lab at Bundy and on main campus as space and funding can be found.  We will research and suggest optimal technology and software for reading and writing skills’ development.
• We will work with Academic Affairs to define office space for part-time faculty.
• We will work appropriately through the faculty organizations to support adjunct reading faculty in getting compensation for office hours.
• We will develop flex department workshops and flex activities to share strategies for teaching reading comprehension in all our classes. 
• We will expand number of English 23 reading sections and strongly advise students placing in the bottom third of B level and students moving up from C level to take English 23.
• We will conduct a thorough study of B level students to determine:
• the impact of English 23 completion or co-enrollment on English 21A success/retention and students’ matriculation to English 1.
• the number and percentage of English 21A students who receive prerequisite waivers for English 1 and their success rate .
• We will discuss and define clear distinctions between English 21A and

English 21B. 

• We will survey new instructors about their responses to textbooks selected for their classes and form a team to review their evaluations, review alternatives, and make recommendations of titles for the next year. 
• We will work with ESL, the Assessment Center, and the Office of Institutional Research to validate the Common Essay.
• We will study ETS essay evaluation software to determine whether it would be feasible and appropriate for grading the Common Essay or provide potential for an English 1 common essay assignment. 
• We will revise our SMC web pages so that they meet the accessibility guidelines.
• We will develop a short training module, mentorship, and clear evaluation criteria for English distance education instructors. 
• We will investigate possibilities for online tutoring support in composition for distance education and other student populations.
• We will survey English faculty about how to improve tutoring services, drawing on findings of the last Accreditation Report.
• We will pursue the restoration of funding for classroom writing assistants.
• We will devise strategies to encourage more at-risk and marginally successful students to seek tutoring in their writing and reading skills.   
• We will encourage a culture of academic honesty by: 
• Pursuing mydropbox.com licenses or other plagiarism software.
• Holding a department discussion about issues raised by the Honor Code subcommittee of Students Affairs
• We will nurture English majors by holding annual open houses for them, continuing to offer activity hour colloquiums, and involving more students in literary series planning and participation.
• We will work together to further define our evaluation process (as math has) for part-time faculty and work toward an evaluation process that can be a mentoring tool.
• We will continue to build our dual enrollments relationships with high schools.
• We will continue to build bridges with the local community through literary series, readings, and book and writing events.

Response to Recommendations from Executive Summary of 1999 Review

1.      “The English Department should continue its analysis of assessment instruments.  The department should work with the Vice President, Student Affairs in choosing the English assessment instruments for the proposed computerized assessment laboratory.”

English chose the ACCUPLACER assessment instrument, approved by the Chancellor’s office and has successfully implemented a strong placement process. Cut-off scores seem to be placing students successfully.  However, ESL is less satisfied with their placement instrument and some under prepared students enter English 1.  English and ESL have discussed this issue, and English supports ESL’s search for a better instrument; there has been some discussion in Student Affairs about whether students who place at the English 1 level on the ESL instrument should also take the English placement test, as used

to be the case. 

2.      “The English Department should reestablish its successful Writing Across the Curriculum discussions.”

Through funding from UCLA and a Chancellor's grant, an English faculty member, Gordon Dossett, directed a project that offered three composition seminars.   The seminars were open to all faculty, and participants--who received $1000 stipends and academic credit --included professors who teach biology, sociology, philosophy, history and ESL.  When the grant expired, funding was not found to keep the program going.   

3.      “The English Department should consider involvement with the Student Success Class, Human Development 20.”

The English department has paired English 21A classes with Counseling 20 through EOPS and Scholars Bridge.  Through SCORE it paired 81A and 21A classes with Counseling 20.  Through FYI Bridge in fall 2005 it offers two pairings of English 21A and Counseling 20.  Without “hard links” between classes, however, creating the cohorts has been challenging. 

4.      “The English Department should reinstate its practice of communicating regularly with counselors to increase appropriate placement of students in English classes.”

The Welcome Center has provided a new avenue for us to work with Counseling in enrolling new students. English has met with Welcome Center to define strategies for assisting current C-level students to enroll for their next English classes.  The chairs of English and Counseling communicate regularly and the chairs share information with their departments.  Several college innovations are also helping with placement.  The Assessment Center, under Esau Tovar’s coordination, has been enormously supportive.  By taking our concerns about prerequisite challenge procedures, he was able to engage the Student Affairs committee to create a workable and fair placement challenge system. Likewise, MIS has facilitated our placement of C level students by instituting programming changes that enable more specific placement of students at the C level and enforce our reading/writing co-requisites between C and B program levels.  Finally, Enrollment Services and MIS have been forward-thinking and responsive in putting into place electronic prerequisite waiver systems, clear electronic grade roster procedures, and add/drop procedures that directly facilitate placement. 

5.      “The English department should continue to contemplate how best to serve B level students.  Some related possibilities include applying for Partnership for Excellence funds and scheduling a brainstorming retreat.”

We have been trying to improve our service to B-level students as evidenced in our involvements in SCORE project (see Appendix).  Program cuts and the inability to hire in reading have prevented us from implementing a plan to support our 21A/B students with more reading classes.  We are considering ways that a President’s Circle grant might support us in having a meeting or flex day activity around this topic.    

6.      “The English Department should continue to work with the Dean of Institutional Research regarding the progress of C level students who do not take English and the relationship between success in B level classes and success in other classes that require writing.”

We met several times with the former Dean of Institutional Effectiveness about this.  More recently, Esau Tovar has completed a thorough study of the impact of reading proficiency (as indicated by English assessment scores) on first-time student success, showing that students with B-level  level proficiency in English skills can expect to be successful in only 22 of the 100 most offered college courses.  For students with C-level reading proficiency that number drops to a half-dozen (see Appendix and Esau Tovar’s paper, The Impact of Assessment on Student Educational Outcomes, Oct. 7. 2004, available on his SMC website).  The topic of student success at the C and B levels is intensely important to us, given enrollment growth and the college’s Title V commitment and will be the subject of our research and planning over the next years.  

7.      “Once new strategies are implemented for B level students, the English department might consider how the strategies could enhance the success of C level students.”

With the initiative of reading instructors, who identified a need to better serve the specific needs of disabled students in the C level curriculum, the entire basic skills program was rethought to develop English 83B and its co-requisite English 81A.  The C-level sequence of courses was rewritten and went through the Curriculum Committee process.  An evaluation of those changes is in progress and will involve gathering data on C-level progress with support from the Office of Institutional Research.

8.      “The English Department should continue to explore integration of technology into the curriculum.”

Delivery of distance education classes and hybrid classes has increased dramatically (see above Effective Use of Technology, Distance Education.)

Response to Suggestions for Institutional and/or Community Support to Strengthen the Program:

1. “Because the English Department is one of the largest campus departments, the Vice President, Academic Affairs should assist in the search for office space where English professors can review papers with their students.  The search should include considering the possibility of Library Village and any vacated space on the third floor of the Technology Building.”

English has two small offices is Library Village that are scheduled by English faculty through the department secretary.  A third office was accidentally given to Media Center for storage.  Academic Affairs recently surveyed departments to discover what office space is in use and where space might be available.  With any luck the results can be used to keep a master list of available—and assigned—office space. 

2. “The Vice President, Student Affairs and the President/Superintendent should seriously consider the deleterious effect on student success when English professors do not hold office hours.”

Part-time faculty who teach five units or more of composition classes receive compensation for one office hour per week.  As yet, the benefits of faculty office hours for reading students have not been explored or negotiated.

3. “The Vice President, Academic Affairs should support a retreat of the English Department to brainstorm the best way to teach B level students.”

The college has not been in a financial position to do this. 

4. “The Vice President, Academic Affairs should continue to investigate the acoustical problems in the classrooms on the second floor of the Technology Building.”

        . . . so that . . .?  

5. “The Vice President, Academic Affairs and the Academic Senate Information Services Committee should consider how an English reading lab would positively impact student success.”

Academic Affairs has expressed openness to such a lab, but faculty must present a rationale and budget request for consideration.  Nursing has requested VTEA funding for just such a lab to remediate nursing program applicants who do not meet the twelfth grade reading comprehension entrance requirement.  English is exploring with other programs the possibilities for such a lab that would serve the campus.

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

            English has worked in partnership with other departments in creating systems, developing curriculum, and creating/revising policies to further student success and retention.  These have been described throughout this report.  In the Appendix we include reports from faculty working in SCORE and in the Nursing-English Alliance VTEA project. 

            English has also developed new courses.  As outlined earlier, we revamped our C-level curriculum, but we also added new literature courses:  Contemporary British Literature; History and Literature of Contemporary Africa; Asian-American Literature; and Asian Film, Literature, and Society.  We developed an English 1 class that focuses on writing in the sciences for students seeking professions in health care, and we have offered a composition class targeting military veterans.

Faculty Engagement in Shared Governance and Student Life

            The department has provided campus leadership in improving instruction, student success, and retention, as well as in addressing working conditions for faculty.  Two of the last three Academic Senate presidents have been English instructors (Charles Donaldson and Gordon Dossett).  The current and long-standing president of Faculty Association (Lantz Simpson) is an English faculty member, while an English part-time faculty member (Rebecca Curtis) serves as coordinator of adjunct faculty.  English has offered leadership on the Curriculum Committee, where an English faculty member is now chair (David Zehr), and serves actively on Personnel Policies (Barbara Goldthwait, Susan Sterr, and, recently Jim Pacchioli), Student Affairs (Gary Todd), Distance Education (Judith Remmes, Dana Del George, Mike Gustin), Professional Development (Jean Gorgie), and Sabbaticals (Mario Padilla, Lawrence Driscoll, and, soon, Wil Doucet) committees.  

English faculty have also offered leadership in various programs and projects, including:

            Scholars:  Daniel Cano, current faculty leader; Mary Fonseca previous leader

            SCORE:  Gary Todd, Ed Markarian, Gilda Feldman, Jean Gorgie, Gloria                                                 Heller, Carol Fuchs, Jim Santilena, Laura Campbell, et al

            Student Success Project:  Carol Fuchs, Susan Sterr, et al

            President’s Task Force on Retention:  Gilda Feldman, Judith Remmes

Furthermore, English faculty sponsor student clubs and activities, including:

            English Club--Hari Vishwanadha

            Poetry Club--Mario Padilla

            Voices magazine:--Diana Aghabegian

            Surf Club--Gina Ladinsky

            Amnesty International--Ed Markarian, Karin Costello

            French Club--Daniel Landau

            Phi Theta Kappa--Jean Gorgie and Wil Doucet

            Save Sudan—Jean Gorgie

            Peer Mentors—Lawrence Driscoll

Creative Writing            

The Santa Monica College creative writing program has continued to develop strongly.  It hosts semester literary readings at the Santa Monica College Concert Hall of works by both faculty writers and star pupils of our creative writing classes. We have nurtured as well the Santa Monica College poetry club which, in spring 2004, launched its first published magazine called The Coaster, focusing on the Santa Monica College community of writers: students, faculty and staff.  Our staff of award winning authors and poets continues to grow.  Jim Krusoe’s novel Iceland was selected as one of the LA Times Best 100 for 2002.  Brad Listi’s novel, Attention Deficit Disorder is forthcoming for Simon and Schuster in spring 2006.  In addition to a Fulbright grant to study, teach, and write in Russia, Carol Davis has received a PEN award and is currently poet in residence at Hamilton High School. 

Awards and Publications:

We would also like to recognize faculty achievements, publications, and awards.  The list became lengthy.  Some of the more recent accomplishments have been reported in the college’s Missed Information, included in the appendix

Areas of Strength

1. A dedicated, multi-talented, diverse, and strong faculty
2. A collegial and cooperative spirit that enables us to work together with respect for our abilities and our differences  
3. A willingness to experiment
4. An enthusiasm for teaching and serving students
5. A deep commitment to access for all students
6. A strong curriculum

Areas of weakness:

1. Full-time hiring
2. Communication
3. Facilities and space

Strategies for the Future:

• To increase access by developing strong bridges with local high schools and the community at large
• To work together to study and to improve our curriculum at all levels so that we can more effectively meet the needs of our students
• To work with all campus services, disciplines, and constituencies to improve the instructional support for students